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I think it's useful as a counter to Postel's law. Postel's law (or robustness principle) states that you should be liberal in what you accept, conservative in
by steveridout 4y ago
I think it's useful as a counter to Postel's law.
Postel's law (or robustness principle) states that you should be liberal in what you accept, conservative in what you output. Hyrum's law shows the danger in being liberal in what you accept.
(Shameless plug: I've just made public an open source CLI flashcard app where the example deck includes a set of Hacker Laws including the aforementioned ones, you can try it here: https://github.com/SteveRidout/flashdown https://github.com/SteveRidout/flashdown)
- omginternets 4y agoThis is an interesting point. Taken to its extreme, Postel's law will trade some abstraction for robustness. Conversely, Hyrum's law will trade some robustness for abstraction.
- lupire 4y agoHyrum's law is an extension Postel's law to say "accept everything you accepted in the past"
- pencilguin 4y agoPostel's law has turned out to be a disaster for security, and for extensibility. If everything you can get already means something, nothing can ever mean anything new. "Be clear about what you will accept", instead. And, make sure there is an easy way to discover why it was not accepted.
- detaro 4y agoNo, it does not prescribe anything you should or shouldn't do.